


Fireworks Night

by BurningTea



Series: Holidays and Occasions [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Also mentions of 1600s punishments, Fireworks night, Guilt-ridden Cas, Love Confession, M/M, and Guy Fawkes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-05
Updated: 2015-11-05
Packaged: 2018-04-30 05:41:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5152418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurningTea/pseuds/BurningTea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean and Cas are in the UK on 5th Novemeber in search of bones for a spell. It leads to Cas becoming focused on guilt and betrayal. Dean helps.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fireworks Night

Dean flinched at the explosion, hunching and glancing round. Next to him, Cas frowned and tilted his head up to the sky. Coloured light reflected in his eyes.

“Why the fuck do they need to let so many of the damn things off?” Dean muttered, turning up the collar of his jacket and scowling round at the damp darkness.

A moment later, that darkness was split by yet another splintering of light, the rising note ending in the bang causing a muscle in Dean’s jaw to tighten. 

Cas shook his head, looking no more happy than Dean but far less twitchy. He had his hands in the pockets of the new coat he’d picked up only a week or so before, the charcoal grey of the heavy wool far too smart for a hunt. 

“Heaven’s response to betrayal has always been…stern,” he said, his eyes moving constantly as he scanned the sky. “Still, for humans to celebrate the punishment of a traitor so enthusiastically, and for so long, seems…” He trailed off and pressed his mouth into a firm line.

“Angels don’t celebrate it? That what you’re saying?” The idea that Heaven could be coming out as the less obsessive about punishment was jarring, what with everything Dean now knew Cas had been put through. “Pretty sure your whole species gets high on vengeance, Cas. And you manage your own light-shows, what with all that Grace.”

He saw Cas’ scowl shift, revealing a flash of hurt, just before Cas turned his back, his shoulders stiff.

“Shit, look, Cas, I didn’t mean-”

“Yes, you did,” Cas said.

Dean thought about trying again, telling Cas that he hadn’t lumped Cas in with the rest of his species for so long that it was too easy to forget his comments might include Cas at all. From the set of Cas’ shoulders, it looked like the guy wasn’t in the mood to listen.

Sighing, Dean moved past Cas, leaving the block-paved street and turning into the park. It was a stupid, fake looking place, obviously pretty new, brick houses surrounding a patch of grass and a playground. The houses were all slightly different, as though having different patterns in the brickwork and a mix of sizes would hide the fact they were crammed so tightly together that some houses only had inches between their roofs. 

He heard Cas’ footsteps follow him, something about them sounding despondent. That was the last thing he’d wanted. Well, okay. He been pretty set against getting on a plane and flying to Britain, but the witch they’d spoken to about Rowena had sworn they needed the bones of a traitor, preferably one related to the woman who’d cursed Cas. Dean’s hands clenched into fists just at the thought of her. Sure, she’d cured Cas, but only because they’d forced her to. 

A barrage of fireworks interrupted his chain of thought and he swore, stopping dead partway across the grass.

“This is fucking stupid,” he said. “You can’t really tell me we’re going to find a traitor’s bones in a kid’s park. And even if we do, how are we going to dig them up with these things lighting up the joint every few minutes.”

And tensing Dean up. Not that he’d admit that. He’d loved letting off fireworks with Sam when he was younger, but these were so constant, and he couldn’t enjoy being out in the creeping damp and chill of England. The way the sounds echoed off the closely packed houses was messing with his sense of perception. He kept thinking he was going to be hit by one of the damn things.

“This is where she said they’d be,” Cas said, his words terse. 

“Oh, come on, Cas,” Dean said, closer to a snap than he’d intended. “I didn’t mean to make out you love vengeance. I’m sorry, all right?”

Cas flicked a glance at him, his face clearer under the lights in the park. Why anyone needed so many streetlights round a park at night, Dean had no idea. 

“It’s…” Cas stopped and sighed. “It’s not entirely untrue.” He sounded reluctant, like he was confessing to something he’d rather Dean didn’t know. “There are times, people, situations, where I feel all too wrathful. Vengeance…I can understand the appeal. And angels, we have long memories. The 1600s were a blink away for us. Still, the way people treat it as a party, a…a festival, it’s disturbing. Do you know what they did to him, Dean?”

“Who? Guy whatever?”

“Fawkes,” Cas said. “Yes.”

“Did they chop off his head?” 

Dean had heard something about it, somewhere, but it wasn’t like it had much impact on his life. Except now, when he had to listen to thousands of explosions because the guy had been caught before he could blow up some building in London.

The twist of Cas’ lips told Dean that wasn’t the right answer, and that Cas really didn’t like the correct answer.

“No.” 

His voice had dropped even lower, almost growling the word. It didn’t affect Dean at all. The chill, though, the chill had him shifting, shivering and pulling his jacket more tightly about him. 

“Then I’ve got no idea.”

“They were going to hang, draw and quarter him. They would have cut off his testicles, sliced open his belly and pulled his intestines out for him to see.”

This time, Dean’s shiver was due to Cas’ words. He knew what that would look like, what it would feel like. It took a moment to shove the sense-memory from Hell back into the dark corner where he kept it. 

“Going to?” he asked, holding to the hint the guy hadn’t gone through it. He didn’t know why it felt important, but it did.

“No. No, he jumped from the gallows. Broke his neck. I…I admit, at the time, Uriel said it was a shame, but I…” Cas shook his head and fell silent.

“Yeah. I get that.”

He looked away, needing a moment, and his gaze lingered on the set of swings, the climbing frame. 

“Hey. We’re…we’re not digging up this Fawkes guy’s bones, are we?”

“Oh. No. No, Rowena isn’t related to him. This man is from Scotland.”

Right. Okay. Dean very carefully did not ask how the man had died. It was bad enough to be looking at getting parts of some skeleton back home from this soggy corner of Northern England without thinking the whole way about guts spilling from a warm, still breathing body.

They didn’t speak about it anymore, having enough to think about what with having to break a few streetlights and still worry about those fucking fireworks bringing people out who might spot them. Still, they needed those bones tonight. They were on a plane back in the morning, and the witch Sam had got on board swore they needed these bones to bind Rowena.

It wasn’t until later, sitting in something called a Travelodge, which managed to suck the warmth out of a typical motel (and that wasn’t something Dean had ever thought he’d see), that the conversation picked back up.

Cas had just finished wrapping the bones in a piece of leather covered in sigils which he swore would prevent the contents from being noticed at the airports or on the flight itself, when Dean gave in and admitted he was still bothered by their earlier conversation.

“So who do you want vengeance on?” he asked.

From the way Cas froze, he knew backing off might be easier, but it was that kind of stillness that said something was eating away at the angel and Dean knew how it was to let that crap fester.

“Anyone I know?” he asked.

“Many people,” Cas said softly. “Betrayal is not an easy thing to move past.”

“No,” Dean agreed. “But cutting someone open kind of ruins any chance of trying.”

“I suppose so,” Cas said. 

“Okay, well now you sound like you’re in favour of the slicing and dicing of living people. Mixed messages, Cas.” He tried to inject some humour into that, but it fell flat.

Cas left the leather-wrapped bones and sat down heavily on the narrow settee. Folding his hands in his lap, he finally met Dean’s eyes. 

“Sometimes,” he said, “I believe I was wrong to run from them. The person I most want vengeance upon is myself, for what I’ve done. For what I’ve failed to do.”

He stopped, wetting his lips with his tongue, looking like he might go on. The silence stretched out until Dean broke it.

“You aren’t a traitor, Cas,” he said. 

Cas’ lack of a reply said he didn’t agree. 

“What, you think you actually deserve what they’d do to you? What they’ve already done?”

“I’ve done far worse than Guy Fawkes did,” Cas replied, still holding Dean’s gaze.

“And a lot more good,” Dean said, making his voice iron. “And you’ve been punished, anyway, over and over. Worse has been done to you than Fawkes ever suffered. If you did do any wrong, Cas, you’ve already paid. What? You don’t believe me?”

“I want to,” Cas said. “I think I want to. But, it’s hard… For so long I was duty and obedience, and going against that, so many times, it leaves wounds I can’t seem to heal. And, and I know you don’t think well of them, that all of my friends in Heaven are dead, but it does hurt, to know that if they had me, if I were being punished as they see fit, Heaven might light up with its own celebration. I believe it would last longer than 400 years.”

Dean wanted to tell Cas he was being melodramatic, but the kicker was that Cas was likely right. The only angel to rebel worse than Cas was Lucifer, and it was up for debate at this point which one of them had done more damage. That Cas had done it to save, to protect, didn’t seem to matter to the angels that were left.

He couldn’t absolve Cas of his crimes against Heaven, didn’t really think of them as crimes anyway, so he sidestepped that and left the bed to join Cas on the settee.

“Hey,” he said, his hand hovering close to Cas’ back. “You know I forgave you, right? For what you did with the souls. I mean, I already forgave you, years ago, but the last few years, with what I did to keep Sam alive, with knowing the Darkness is because of actions I took… Look, what I’m trying to say is that I get it now. You were up against Raphael, up against a whole new end of the world. You did what you thought would save us all.” 

He paused before the next bit, because he knew it was true, or at least was pretty sure he did, but he kept teetering on the edge of confronting it. Here, so many miles from home, with the thuds and hollow explosions of seemingly endless fireworks sounding outside, seemed like it was somewhere he could risk saying it. 

“And you were saving me. It means a lot, man, that you didn’t want to cause me more pain. I know what that’s like. Not wanting…” He took a breath, right up to the line of facing it, and steps over. “Not wanting to hurt someone you’re in love with.”

From the way Cas’ head shot up, he hadn’t been expecting that. His eyes were wide, slightly panicked.

“Dean, I didn’t… I mean, I don’t… I…”

He swallowed, the ends of all of his sentences apparently trapped in his throat, and Dean let his hand land on Cas’ shoulder, sliding up to cup the side of the angel’s face. Cas’ lips parted and his expression turned to surprise.

“Cas,” Dean said, strangely calm now this was happening. “I’m saying I know, okay? I know you’re in love with me.”

“I’m sorry,” Cas whispered. 

“No. Fuck, no. Don’t be sorry.”

Dean brought his other hand up and rested his fingers on Cas’ knee, feeling the tension there.

“I’m saying I want you to know I forgive you, that you are not a traitor, not to me, and you don’t deserve any sort of punishment. All right?” He waited for Cas’ tiny nod before letting the last words go, his own sort of firework, rising to what he hoped would be a beautiful show and not destruction. “I’m saying I’m in love with you, too.”

The pause was longer than Dean liked, long enough he was starting to think he’d made a mistake, when Cas blinked, leaning slightly forward, his eyes dropping from Dean’s down to Dean’s mouth and back up. Dean waited, letting Cas make the choice, and seconds later Cas closed the gap. 

The press of his lips lit Dean up brighter than those fireworks lit up the night-sky. 

He knew it wouldn’t solve Cas’ problems, that the angel would still struggle with what had gone on between him and his siblings, but right now he focused on taking Cas apart in a way that had nothing to do with punishment.

**Author's Note:**

> I just wanted to have them in the Uk for Fireworks Night.


End file.
